Alison Kelly made an enormous contribution to the early work on gender equality in the late 1970s/early 1980s, and in particular to getting more girls into science and technology subjects.

In the early 80s, we were working on two of the first projects on gender funded by the then Schools Council: ours was the Sex Differentiation Project and Alison's was the Girls into Science and Technology Project. We would meet in the project office at Great Portland Street in London regularly, to discuss strategy about how to persuade schools and policymakers that girls' education was important. At this time, girls were lagging behind boys in many subjects and examinations, and gender was considered a joke.

It was, however, a time when university academics and researchers, schools, teachers, unions and policymakers actually talked to each other. So while at Manchester University, Alison was able to carry out research and write academic papers on sex differences in science achievement; give talks to teacher groups about her research; help analyse individual school gender patterns as feedback for school action; develop curriculum materials and teacher self-monitoring strategies; and support option choice counselling and girls-only groups for science and technology subjects. She made a huge impact.